VMware announces Horizon 6. Supports app publishing to compete Citrix

At an online webinar attended by 20.000+ viewers VMware announced at April 9 VMware Horizon 6. Horizon 6 will support hybrid cloud and VMware VSAN. The most exciting new feature which caused a lot of buzz in the blogosphere is support for published applications/remote apps.

Until now Horizon, specificaly the View software was limited to present full blown virtual desktops to end users. Each virtual desktop was running as a virtual machine (VDI). Presenting a full desktop is not ideal for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Endusers are interested in using apps and much less in a desktop for holding shortcuts to apps and documents which takes up their complete screen.

Both Citrix (using XenApp published applications and also using XenDesktop) as well as Microsoft (using Remote Desktop Session Host RemoteApp technology) are able to present just a single or set of applications instead of a desktop. Citrix is using ICA/HDX and Microsoft RDP/RemoteFX protocol to present the display and handle input and devices.

With Horizon 6 VMware offers support for seamless applications using either VMware Blast or PCoIP protocol.PCoIP is at GA an official protocol provider available for Microsoft RDSH. VMware and Microsoft worked closely together to enable VMware as a third protocol provider.

The VMware Horizon View client is at GA able to support View VDI, RDSH desktops and RDSH RemoteApps. Microsoft RDSH servers combined with VMware Horizon 6 is enough to publish applications to a broad set of clients. Supported client operating systems are Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.A client for Linux will also be available soon.

While XenApp will have the most features for some time to go, and has good integration with appliances like Citrix NetScaler, Horizon 6 will be good enough for many scenario’s.